For last week‘s FOLK Journal Challenge (which I am doing this week, again….) I again thought about it all week and took my pictures last week….and realized I didn’t really follow the words of the prompt much at all…But I am going to share my thoughts and my interpretation anyway….no matter how far off they are from topic!

Here’s the prompt:

Be Brave and Break Out Your Green Thumb!

What Plants will you be growing in your garden this year? Make a list of fruits, vegetables, and herbs you plan to or would like to grow. If you’re not a gardener, where do you search out fresh, local produce? Tell us about your farmer’s market and your favorite fresh food recipes!

I really started thinking about all the “family” plants that we have had here mostly for many years. But just to “try” to stay on subject a little bit before I go on my merry little way away from there, here’s a picture of our garden “citadel” that I created to keep deer and rabbits and cats at bay for Linda years ago. It doesn’t look so great right now because Linda couldn’t keep up with it late last summer due to work, but she’s thinking she will have more time to get out here this year. She usually has a nice little list of basics to grow along with a few “guest” veggies. we have some “permanent” things in here: a few raspberries (both red and golden), strawberries (both red and white), blueberries, and invariably a pumpkin will make its way in via the compost and cilantro will come up in various places.

So now where I went with the green thumb concept…..Basically, I just went around and took pictures of the green stuff that came to us via our families, and thought I’d share them with you. This is montbretia and comes to us via my mother in law. Right now it looks like this…but in July or so it will look like this.

This tangled mess is mostly grapes from my parents’ farm in Idaho. They gave a stick basically back when we lived in this trailer (the trailer needs to be torn down at this point…it is falling apart, but it costs a lot to tear down and haul away…sigh..) There is also a Nelly Moser Clematis in here, but I am not sure how it’s doing anymore. The Clematis I bought Linda years ago for Mother’s Day and because it reminded both of us of our grandmothers.

This is a juniper tree that my parents brought back here from their farm in Idaho. I love the texture of this evergreen and the little blue berries it gets late in the summer. They don’t grow naturally here, but this one seems to be doing fine.

This evergreen is an alpine noble fir. It was our very first Christmas tree here in the little trailer we started living in on this property 21 years ago. We almost lost it about 16 years ago or so to some Woolly aphids. I managed to treat it and save it. I hope we never have trouble with it again because it does mean so much to me. But I wonder sometimes now if I didn’t plant it a little too close to the cabin…

And finally this is WHERE a peony should be coming back up. It is from my Grandfather’s original Peony that came all the way from Nebraska and has been somewhere in the family for at least 80 years. We had another one of these and lost it, found it, and then lost it again….hoping this one will come back and prosper. It is a deep magenta colored one and so beautiful.

I am really not very good at keeping gardens neat and tidy can you tell? I like to make gardens, but I don’t like to weed them, or fuss over them, so I really do like more “natural” looking spaces. Linda is much better at taking care of them, but I have always built more gardens than she has the time for.

I was going to have a garden this year, but hubby has decided to plant solar panels there instead. A friend has a farm and she is going to let me use part of her garden for : pie pumpkins, spagetti squash, zucchini, kale and whatever other seed jumps in my basket. In exchange for the land use , I’ll share my crop.